My Little Grotto

This is my grotto for St. James the Greater in my room.

My Camera Could Not Capture It...

Your camera wouldn't have been able to capture it either. I was trudging home from the hell that is my job, and I crossed a bridge over the DesPlaines River. I've been going over that bridges, either walking or driving, several times a week since I was four. Big deal. The bridge by the dam. I'd been over it thousands of times before. Once in a while, I would stop and look, pretending that I saw how beautiful it was. I always wanted to see the beauty of the world, but my eyes were blind, despite the fact that I have 20/20 vision. I would try and fool myself into thinking that I understood the beauty of the earth, but I never could. To me, the river was just a bunch of water, flowing it's course. But not today. Today the clouds above the river were colored pink and were in a magnificent design. Right above them was a fingernail moon, and below them was a neverending line of green trees. The river was flowing gently down the damn, and the fishermen were enjoying each other's company. It was the most beautiful sight I have ever been blessed to witness. I could not focus on the whole scene at one time. I wanted to take in the whole view at once, but I would have had to step out onto the bridge and risk getting hit by the oncoming traffic. "I wish I had my camera!" I thought. But my digital purple polaroid camera would not have been able to capture it the way I remembered it anyway. I continued walking, past the houses on the other side of town, and saw a house that had just been built. "How beautiful," I thought. There were flowers hanging outside of the second story window and it looked perfectly lovely. I looked at the whole house. I realized that a few weeks ago, I would never have been able to appreciate the beauty of that style of house. (Forgive me, I do not know what kind of house it was: I am terrible at classifying cars and houses, but I believe it was a bungalow. I love the word bungalow. It makes me feel like bouncing.) I realized then that somehow, I was viewing the world through different eyes, without even trying. I continued walking, and at the end of the block was the Presbyterian Church. It had stained glass windows and big wooden doors. The church office was an arts and crafts building. It reminded me of the first scene in Beauty and the Beast, when Belle is walking through the village. Again, I wished I had my camera. I had seen this building, too, since I was four and had never realized it's beautiful architecture or the extensive grounds. I began walking again and saw the park across the street from the library. (Our library, by the way, is absolutely gorgeous, and I knew that before I had this new way of seeing the world. It is made out of stone and has a cozy fireplace and reading rooms and is just the most comfortable place in the world!) The park, with its tall trees looked so silently pulchritudinous that I wished I had my camera yet again. And I realized. I did indeed have my camera with me! I was so mad at myself for not realizing that it was in my bag before, but I wasn't about to walk back because my feet were killing me after being on them for hours. I tried to take a picture, but it was turning out way too dark on my camera. The camera just could not capture the moment.

Today I saw the most beautiful sights that I have ever appreciated. I give credit to God for helping me see the beauty of nature.

xoxograce

More Best Friends

After posting about my best friends and really thinking about it, I realized that I have a lot more than four best friends this summer. This makes me extremely happy =]. I love you, my friends.

xoxograce

"Best Friends"

From about first grade until around fifth or sixth grade my best friend was Elizabeth, a girl who went to my school and lived nearby. In fifth grade she went to the public school in town, and I continued attending the Catholic school. Until then we had been inseparable. We started seeing each other less and less, and we both made new friends. The title of "best friends" that we had given ourselves steadily turned into just "friends" and we rarely saw each other.

After that my "best friends" switched from year to year. I wouldn't realize it right away, but every summer I would notice that I was hanging out with different people than I had the summer before. The summer after freshman year I had four best friends. The next summer it changed and I still had four best friends, but 3 of them were different than the last year. By the end of last summer, my best friends had changed again.

This summer, I have three best friends. One of them has never been on the roster of best friends before and I regret not knowing her for the past 2 years. Thank God for bringing her into my life this year. These are my best friends, not in any particular order, because I love them all the same.

My first best friend is crazy, just like me. She gives me good advice and understands what I am feeling. We always have a great time together and I know that next summer, she will still be one of my best friends.

My second best friend is my little Bumblebee. I call her Bee for short sometimes. Haha. For short. Bee will understand. Bee holds me and my first best friend together. I would not be able to stay remotely sane without her. She tells me things that I don't want to hear. She tries to knock some sense into me. She comforts me and she is a nice Bumblebee so she never stings. I've never heard her say a bad thing about anyone. I need to take a leaf out of her book.

My third best friend, I have known since fourth grade, but we never became friends until high school. She is always there for me, and she is not afraid to tell me things I don't want to hear. She is so generous in everything she does. I'm so glad we went to the same high school otherwise we would have never become friends.

My two preceding summers, I had four best friends. I think I started this summer off with four as well. There is always room, number four, if you ever want to come back. There is always room for you at the inn.

But I've also found a new kind of best friend this summer. His name is Jesus. That's all I'm going to say.

But lately I've been wondering exactly what it means to be best friends. I mean, Person A could hang out with Person B all the time and have the time of his or her life with Person B and trust Person B, but does that mean that Person B is their best friend? What if there is a Person C? And Person A never notices Person C, but Person C cares more about Person A than Person B does and would do anything for Person A, while Person B would only go so far? Wouldn't Person C, then, be the best friend of Person A? Doesn't it make sense that your best friend would be the one who cared about you the most and did the most for you and everything? It's so confusing, the term "best friend."

This is just what I have been thinking about lately. What if we all have a best friend that we forget about, or just don't notice?

xoxograce

Worrying

Anyone who knows me personally, and even those of you who just know me through my blogging, may gather that I am the ultimate worrier. I worry about everything. I can't let things drop and I just keep worrying and worrying. And worrying and worrying. Half of my time has got to be spent worrying. I've spent all night since around 6 worrying. I've been trying to distract myself all evening and have not yet succeeded. When I started writing this post I was thinking about saying that I was excited, but then I realized that it wasn't actually excitement, but a kind of counterbalance to my worrying that I was feeling. I was looking through my mom's bookshelf for something to read (as I have been neglecting to go to the library due to fines for overdue books =]) and I found a book that perfectly suits my needs right now. Heaven Help Us: The Worrier's Guide to the Patron Saints. At the bottom of the front cover it says: "Who to call when your heart is broken, your house won't sell, or you suspet that last check won't clear." This book was written for me! And what a time to find it, right in my own house, when I've been silently flipping out for the past three and a half hours. I just had to post about this as I found it so coincidental and wonderful. I'm going to go scan it now to see who to call on for my issue.

goodnight, all.

xoxograce

Fun

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Have you ever known someone who didn't know how to have fun? I can't stand it. There are some people I know who always hold back. They always think they're having fun, but when you look at them, you see that their smile doesn't go all the way up to their eyes. They've tricked themselves into thinking that they're having fun, but they really aren't. It's all pretend. They never let go. It's good to let go sometimes and be completely crazy. Ahhhhhh I don't know why this has been bothering me so much. It makes me sad when I see people who are pretending to have fun. Laugh obnoxiously loud. Snort. Be crazy. It's good for you.

xoxograce

Randomness

I have been avoiding blogging lately, and I don't know why. Granted, I just got back from my service trip and college searching on Wednesday evening. I'm not going to post about my service trip just yet. I just want to think about it for a while and then decide which aspect to write about. It was a life changing experience, that's all I'll say right now.

I've been thinking about how I must seem so different to people on my blog than I do in real life. I'm not great at communicating through speech, but through writing I can always find the right words. This blog is composed of my thoughts. I wish I could communicate my thoughts as well in every day life as I can when I am writing. That's something I need to work on.

It seems really weird to think that I'm a different person than I was, say, going into freshman year. Do people really change that much? Am I really all that different? Or have my experiences changed me? Or am I the same person I was three years ago but my experiences have changed my outlook on things? It's all so confusing to think about.

I'm really just rambling in this blog. Thanks to anyone who has stuck around to read this far. It's August. School starts in twenty days. July went by way too fast. This time next year I will be packing my bags to go away to college. It's scary. I'll be the first to admit that I'm freaked out about this coming year. Finding a college. Applying. Waiting for the Acceptance letter. Trying to figure out how to pay for it. It's freaking me out.

Okay, I have to go do the laundry. This has been the most random post yet, I'd say. I don't even know. I just needed to blog so that it wasn't hanging over me. I couldn't keep postponing it.

=]
xoxograce